


Luna's Day In

by writworm42



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Introspection, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:39:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writworm42/pseuds/writworm42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a rainy day in London, not fit for going outside. How will Luna and Harry entertain themselves?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bedroom Musings

Light. Dappled pink skipped lightly along black, bouncing blue shadows as it went. In the corner of the scene, green buzzed about, mingling with itself, small dots slowly oozing outwards towards the other colours. What would happen, she wondered, if the green were to trickle down just enough to touch the blue...

Luna's eyes snapped open suddenly, the sources of her slumbering light-show flooding into her line of vision. She had been sleeping as she always did, flat on her stomach, hands pressed firmly under her pillow. Not ten feet away stood the bedroom window, tall and unabashedly bare, without any curtains or superfluous framing to block out the day. Anything on the window would have made Luna feel closed off, restrained. As if the inside were hiding what lay beyond it. This way, right up next to her, nature could say what it wanted, communicate as it wished when it was time to watch, call for help, sleep, or wake up...

Even if that meant very early mornings. 

She smiled, heaving her body upwards to free the extremeties caught under the weight of her head. As she slid her hands, red and crease-marked, from her pillow, her feet seemed to move as if attached by string. _You go out, I go in..._ She twisted to sit up on her side, arms held stiffly to support her as she stared through the window. Between thick brushes of evergreen, needles intertwining in a sharp, toothy pattern, the sky was gray, fuzzy. Not quite wet or melancholy--simply alive with clouding. Luna inhaled deeply, as if the damp air of outside might be sucked inwardly, might settle inside her lungs, cozy and cool. Familiar. She'd always loved rainy days.

Beside her, Harry stirred. Her skin pricked slightly, keenly aware of her partner's movements, but she did not move. 

She was watching the clouds walk. 

One could hardly tell that the sky, made entirely of swaths of gray, was moving. Luna examined it in the little dips and patterns along the edges of the sky where light poked through just a little more, where darkness contoured underbellied curves. Those spots, she observed, were continuously moving to the left. 

It amused her, somewhat. 

Luna's skin pricked again as Harry's stirring evolved to full movements inelegant with morning-daze.

"What are you looking at, love?" Harry's voice, groggy and hoarse from eight hours' rest, sounded behind her. He moved closer, coming up behind Luna and wrapping his arms around her waist. Without taking her eyes off the sky, she returned the gesture, rubbing her hands gently along the ridges and lines of his wrists. 

"The sky is moving," she answered, "Like that muggle-dance you showed me. How curious..."

Luna remembered Harry taking her to a muggle community centre, to a bright, cream-coloured and dirt-stained room decorated with wall-to-wall mirrors. She remembered wearing cowboy boots and a large, impractical hat for the occasion, and that her outfit didn't matter--for once, everyone was just as silly as she was. The muggles danced and laughed in a line, and Luna felt light...

"Looks like it's going to rain."

Luna smiled again at Harry's words; he was always so practical, so rational. So unimaginative. Turning to face her partner, she couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for him; there was nothing but green in his eyes, made flat and dull by years of skepticism and exposure to all matters of the world. Science. 

She pushed the thoughts aside and rested her head on his shoulder. No matter what Harry was like, she loved him for it. It was as if they balanced each other out. Besides, she knew that Harry could see what she saw. She knew that deep down, he was curious about the same things, wanted desperately to observe deeper and ask the questions all others were afraid of...

She wondered if he knew it.

"Well, it's my day off. What are we going to do with it?" Harry smiled, softly kissing the crown of Luna's head. He recoiled almost immediately, lips pursing into a thin line. 

"Nettles and nightshade," she offered up without apology, "I spike my shampoo with their essences to ward off any beasts."

"I'm sure no nargles will come near you." Harry wiped his mouth with one bare arm, sucking in a large amount of damp morning air before sighing and turning back to the woman in his arms.

"Oh, no, Harry, of course nargles won't! I'm talking about--"

"Please don't say crumple-horned anything."

"No. Different beasts entirely, but don't worry. They don't like rain." Luna turned back to the window, leaving Harry's warm enbrace for the prickling cold of wooden floorboards under her feet. Putting her hand on the window, she inhaled calmly and stared out into the clouds. As if in response, the first droplets of the day hit the icy layer separating Luna from the outdoors. The smile crept back into her face, just slightly. Just enough for Harry, watching her reflection in the glass, to notice.

"Well," she raised her voice so that he could hear clearly, "I don't think we'll be going outside."

"I better get started on breakfast, then."

With that remark and a great deal of thumping clatter, Harry left the room, only being careful not to slam the door. Luna did not move, only stayed by the window, still watching.

"I wonder what will happen today?"

In the distance, a creature crowed unlike she had ever heard before.


	2. Breakfast with Hermione

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione crashes to get out of the storm, but her visit may not be as welcome as she and Harry think...

By eight-thirty, it had begun to pour. Harry and Luna had moved to the kitchen, Luna sprawled out across hard-wood floors with an array of parchments and various rainbow-hued inkwells and Harry hopping about from counter to stove-top, trying to throw together breakfast. From her position below, Luna watched Harry as he moved from pot to pan, arm dashing out to grab salt and eyes flitting around with nervous fervour.

 _Mad-eye Harry_ , she thought to herself, turning back to her work. She was in the midst of planning out their day, but found herself stuck after "breakfast feast". It wasn't that there was a lack of things to do around their flat--there were plenty of books, scrolls, and tiny, unassuming knick-knacks to study if ever one needed to burn a few hours--but the general _mood_ of the day. She inhaled deeply, eyelids folding over and closing into a slow, heavy blink. Underneath her, kept at bay only by the thin cotton layer of her nightdress, the floor was cool, and seemed to dip and bend with her body, fleshing out a perfect bed...

"Luna?" Harry's voice roused Luna, although somewhat reluctantly. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, yes," Luna pushed herself up and grabbed her quill, a distracted look clouding into her eyes, "I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"Well, we're far too lazy today to do most things, I think..." she trailed off, frowning. Silence hung in the air for a moment, suspense mounting as Harry waited for Luna to finish her thought. Instead, she picked up her quill and dipped in lightly into deep blue ink, then began to write.

The pancakes, frying in a pan to Harry's right, began to sizzle loudly, breaking the tension.

"Bloody Hell!" Harry snapped to attention, swearing under his breath as he ran to save their food. Luna kept writing. She didn't react to swearing, especially not from Harry. He hung around Ronald Weasley, after all, and Ronald had _quite_ the impressive vocabulary. But, at the end of the day, it was just talk. Of course, that didn't mean words weren't powerful--a year at Hogwarts would prove quite the contrary--but curse-words, as the muggles called them, didn't seem to have much magic.

It was in the intent.

Suddenly, a knock cut through the flat, forcefully drowning out Harry's noisy attempts at cooking and dissolving Luna's train of thought. Without missing a beat, she skipped up deftly and bounced to the door, teasing it open without any effort.

"Hullo, Luna." Hermione stood in the doorway. Her hair, dripping wet, hung in sloppy brown clumps about her shoulders, plastered at the end to rain-darkened clothing. Luna calmly gazed up and down the witch opposite her, observing how Hermione's boots were dark and muddy on the bottoms but a lighter beige as they travelled up her stockinged calf. The witch, sour-faced and tired under the eyes, was dressed in business attire, and Luna guessed that she had given up on trying to get to work in the downpour. "May I come in?"

Luna nodded, stepping aside to let Hermione squelch through. The witch, as assertive as she could be when she was grumpy, was no rude houseguest, and removed her boots, socks, and coat before travelling further inside Luna and Harry's home.

"Hermione!" Harry's voice, urgent underneath his jovial tone, sounded distantly from the kitchen, "Just in time for breakfast!"

 "Sorry to intrude, Harry!" Hermione fiddled with her blazer, attempting to peel back soaked tangles of hair. Luna felt a twinge of pity for the other witch; Hermione, she knew, didn't always work with her wand on her. As a ministry of magic official, she sometimes had to go undercover in muggles' homes to retrieve magic artifacts. Many, beaurocrat co-workers especially, had questioned Hermione's inefficient practices, which could sometimes take months, but Luna understood perfectly why someone would choose not to perform the more obvious home-invasion and memory-charm. Especially not someone with Hermione's history... 

"Luna," Hermione turned to face her hostess, eyebrows knitted with preoccupation and embarrassment, "Do you think you could..."

Luna nodded and bounced off calmly. Each step, as she went across the flat, seemed to come down heavier and heavier, and as she reached the bedroom she became suddenly aware that she was frowning. Sighing, she threw open the door.

 _And just when Harry and I were about to sit down_. The thought, when it came to her, made her heart pick up oddly. It wasn't like they would _do_ anything, other than eat... And talk... And spend time together... 

Inhaling, Luna picked up her wand from its resting-place on her bedside table and squeezed the handle, rolling it back and forth in her fingers so that she could feel its grooves. 

_Harry will have to wait,_ she scolded herself as she left the room to find her new guest, _He can't be your whole life, and you can't be his._

 

A few moments later, Harry, Luna, and a newly-dry Hermione were seated at the table, slightly-burned pancakes steaming in front of them. As good a cook as Harry normally was, no amount of food was enough to dissipate the tension Luna felt. Her fingers, burning as they tried not to fidget with her utensils, seemed to itch whenever she glanced towards Hermione, heard her friend's voice. 

Harry laughed at Hermione's joke, and Luna flashed a quick, weak smile. 

"Thinking?" he asked with a smile, and she nodded despite a flash of irritation that suddenly slashed through her gut. Was he _trying_ to be condescending?

It wasn't just her, that she knew. She could feel the nervous energy crackling around her, mixing with the syrup, nesting along the rims of coffee-mugs (perhaps, she thought, getting ready to multiply?).  Hermione felt as if she was intruding ( _yes_ ), and Harry...

Luna sighed inwardly, looking away from the conversation as she shovelled another forkful of pancake into her mouth, chewing with great, dissatisfied effort. The cake, fluffy and slightly bitter from where Harry had gotten distracted, seemed to grow chewy in her mouth, losing all flavour as she swallowed the sticky bolus. Still, she didn't let this register on her face--Luna, a careful observer, had mastered the pensively blank facial expression long ago. 

Why was that?

Perhaps it was because thinking was so much easier when no one could cloud your findings with their judgment. Perhaps it was because intellectualism was best-suited to introversion, and if people thought you were reacting to them they would seek more of you, taking up all your brain-power with solutions rather than questions. 

"Luna?" Hermione's voice was quiet and careful, yet firm. Like a professor speaking to a child. Luna didn't take it personally; that was how everyone spoke to her, especially Hermione and Harry, though his voice usually had a bit more endearment. They tended to think of her as out of touch with reality. And maybe she was; then again, who were they to define reality for her?

"Sorry, Hermione," Luna looked up from her plate at her company, wistful smile still lingering on her face, "I just had a thought."

"What was it?" Hermione's eyes widened, and Luna's chest seemed to soften and collapse; Hermione did seem genuinely interested in what Luna had to say. Not that she would ever tell. In her youth, she had once met a muggle boy at a magic-show. She'd watched the stunts, slights of hand and visual distractions, with curiosity, but the real fun came in observing the rest of the audience, children who squealed with delight and wonderment. 

_Don't you want to know how he did it?_ she had asked the boy seated next to her.

 _He wouldn't tell_ , the little boy, whose face she remembered clearly as ruddy, round, and blue-eyed, replied.

_A magician never tells._

"Reality," Luna smiled wider as the cryptic words escaped her lips, "And thought itself."

Satisfied, she returned to her breakfast, which had been made all the sweeter by the silence that followed before conversation gradually picked up again.


	3. Chapter 3

"Well, it was nice of you to have me."

The cuckoo-clock, suspended in its orange-painted birchwood glory above Hermione's head, was about to crow 16 hours when the witch stood up from her seat and began to collect her things. Luna exhaled, staying seated until Harry had walked Hermione to the door. It was at that point, in response to their expectant looks and uncomfortable postures rocking back and forth, that she got up and walked to meet them.

"Good-bye, Hermione." the words, as Luna spoke them, surprised her; they came lightly, almost cheerily. Walking over to meet the other two, she stopped just short of Hermione's frizzy brown curls, nodding with a satisfied half-smile. Silence hung about the group, and Luna slipped out of the situation, carefully surveying her friend (could she call Hermione that? Perhaps not. Acquaintance?) from tip to toe. She noticed, for the first time, that the freckles on Hermione's face all seemed relatively uniform, each the exact shade of golden-beige and same incongrous, not-quite-circular shape.

_Interesting._

"Good-bye, Luna." Hermione hesitated for a moment before leaning forward, arms wrapping around Luna's neck. The action, while small to so many others, startled Luna, and she tensed before softening and returning the favour. "I'm sorry," Hermione added as she pulled away.

Luna nodded.

"Are you sure you want to go?" Harry stepped forward, sandwiching his frame in-between the two witches, leaning slightly backwards onto his heels as he turned his face to Hermione.

Luna's breath caught in her throat, surprising her. She wasn't used to feeling jealousy, especially not so irrationally. She could see, in the auras swimming around the others, their language and moods, that there was no spark of feeling between them other than the warmth of friendship, and it wasn't as if that lacked between her and Harry, or--less so, but undeniably increasing--even between herself and Hermione. Still, she was glad when Hermione moved out, bringing the noise and laughter of the day with her, a damp, cold silence taking her place. From their place at the front, they could hear Hermione move towards the lift, taking her time as her heeled footsteps resonated down the hall, _click, click, click._ Luna smiled slightly as the sounds bounced towards her ears, her lips buzzing as they quietly hummed along with the rising and falling intervals of heel-toe, heel-toe, repeat. She found the sounds of Hermione's footsteps, in lieu of taking the floo network, oddly comforting. Final. Luna turned away from the door and looked through the window on the opposite side of the flat.

"It's stopped raining." Harry offered lamely, his voice in that usual, awkwardly serious tone Luna had become so familiar with. She'd found it charming, once upon a time, all the statements of fact simply as they were--it was all right if there was never any analysis attached, no wonderment at his discoveries. He was able to appreciate it when she supplied that, and that was enough. She supposed, in a way, that it was balancing.

"There's something cozy about after it rains," Luna spoke quietly, slow with thought, "The world is damper, and colder, but that just makes you appreciate being inside more." the light, filtering into the room, was bright, almost white in face of the still-gray sky. She watched where it fell onto the hardwood floor, its equally bright shadow rolling across laminate as she moved her head side to side, back and forth. She smiled. "When it's still raining, the world's being cleaned, but when it's clean--the stillness after the storm is nice."

Harry coughed.

"You didn't have to feel jealous of Hermione," he made no move toward her, only trailed his eyes onto her turned back. She could feel his gaze, not angry or defensive but simply Harry as he continued,  "If you'd asked, I would have just given her an umbrella and sent her on her way."

She made no reply; he was right, after all, and he knew that. There was nothing she could argue, and he was in no need of affirmation. Instead, she moved her eyes from the floor to the window, staring through it. Amidst the tops of trees, the still look of muggle apartment-buildings blending in with the sky, there was absolute silence--

  _Wait._ A flash of colour, pink and orange and blue, ran across the window, so fast that Luna couldn't tell what it was. She jogged forward, socked feet helping her move fast along the floor, arriving up against the windowpane. The flash appeared again, and she gasped.

"Harry!" without looking away, she waved Harry over, staring through the trees to the sound of his hurried footsteps. 

"What is it?" she winced at his loud voice, as if the vibrations might scare the creature away through the window, but didn't let that diminish her excitement.

"A creature," she whispered, watching it fly fast again and frowning, trying to take as much in as possible. She could work out wings, feathers, a fat, rounded shape. "A bird."

Behind her, Harry craned to see out the window, pressing closer. His chest brushed against Luna's shoulder, and his arm came up to her back, pressing firmly to steady himself.

"What sort of bird is it?" his voice was serious, as if he believed her, as if he wanted to know as much as she did, even without seeing the same things. Her heart swelled, her outward focus on discovery the only thing keeping a wide grin off her face. It wasn't too long ago that that tone of voice, that closeness, would have been unbelievable. That she would have been Looney Lovegood, not to be taken seriously, even by Harry. She could remember his face, his voice, at fifteen, skeptic and bemused, but too polite to say so. She appreciated just the pretending, back then, appreciated him at least hearing her out even if his heart had been closed, but she knew better now.

"Not one I've ever heard of," she admitted, "Can you get the camera, Harry?" Turning back, she looked Harry straight in the eye as she explained, "I want to take a few pictures. The Quibbler will really sell if we introduce a new creature, I think." 

Harry nodded, and he was off again, leaving cold air in the space where his body had been. Luna sighed, turning back to the window. The flash, again, this time a little slower, revealing red amidst the blues and pinks and oranges; a beak, perhaps? 

_What are you doing here?_

She put her hand against the glass, fingers curling against the cool surface of the window, pressing down and popping with air and pressure. 

"I've got it," Harry's voice was quieter, when he approached again, the camera swinging eagerly from the leather strap hung on Harry's neck, "Are you ready?"

Luna turned to look at Harry and smiled, though not for the picture--simply because seeing him like this, like a little child at the mystical-creatures' zoo for the first time, made her feel that much closer to him; that was, after all, the feeling with which she lived her life. 

"Wait for it to come back," she lectured gently, turning back to check for their bird, "I think it wants something from us." 

"Do you think it's a creature that comes out after rain?" Harry asked, moving next to Luna and readying the camera.

"It might be." 

They waited.

The creature didn't come back.

 

 

 


	4. The end

Back to the morning, back to the bedroom. Back to crumpled, soft sheets, feeling warm. Back to the wetness of outside, only now it had leaked in, salting the mattress. Back to rolling about, pretending to sleep.

They had skipped dinner to stake out the window. They had skipped channel 9.75's _Chasing Beasts_ with Flipper Karamazov's crackling voice filling the flat to talk about their Quibbler article, what the discovery meant to wizardkind. Luna wasn't one to feel disappointed, or to lose faith; she had been so sure it would come back, especially after having been so persistent in getting her attention. There was no such thing as coincidence...

It was no coincidence that it had rained so heavily today, to keep Harry in on his day off so that Luna could spend time with him instead of writing, balancing accounts, and dealing with temperamental staff. 

It was no coincidence that he had burned the pancakes--had that been an omen? After all, it had been no coincidence that Hermione had come in to drown the perfect weather in small talk. 

It was no coincidence that the bird had visited.

It was no coincidence. And yet... All that time, wasted?

She rolled over again, biting her lip and inhaling sharply. Her body, half in the fetal position, half surrendered, was facing the window now. She couldn't resist looking through; the night was cerulean, tinged with the orange glow of far-off streetlights amid the black, swathed shadows of trees. 

"The things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end."

Luna turned to see Harry perched on the edge of the bed. "Do you know who said that to me, Luna?" 

"I did."

"That's right." he smiled. "You weren't wrong, you know."

Her eyes fell from Harry to the mattress.

"Luna?"

"When I was younger, I used to love rainy days. I used to go out and play in the mud, because you could find so much that wasn't out in the sun... Mould, winged-worms--"

" _Winged_ worms? As in worms with--" noticing the look that Luna flashed him, Harry coughed and added, "Sorry. Look, Luna, I know that your day didn't go as planned today. I can't help that."

"You could have turned Hermione away."

"Would you really have wanted that? If I were that selfish, would you still have fallen for me? I did what I thought was right. And I couldn't help that bird not coming back, you know that. So what do you want from me?"

"Nothing; you're right. I'm sorry, Harry."

"I'm sorry, too, I suppose."

They smiled at each other. 

"Do you mind if I....?" Harry, still smiling, gestured sweepingly towards his side of the bed. Luna scooted closer.

"I've always said it was coziest after it rained," she winked. 

 


End file.
